Martin Buber Quotes

Who are you and what are you?... I need to know.

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.

My body parts are all I have left now that are only mine - the world owns everything else.

If love means that one person absorbs the other, then no real relationship exists any more. Love evaporates; there is nothing left to love. The integrity of self is gone.

I do understand what it is to not want to commit to someone, knowing that might bring pain or commit to a life that has to do with being responsible to people other than myself. These things, I think, are normal things.

What we share with another ceases to be our own.

For most of us, relationship with another is based on dependence, either economic or psychological. This dependence creates fear, breeds in us possessiveness, results in friction, suspicion, frustration.

I think having a private life that you only share with your nearest and dearest is important. Otherwise, who are you?

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there.

First, then, a woman will, or won't, - depend on't; If she will do't, she will; and there's an end on't. But, if she won't, since safe and sound your trust is, Fear is affront: and jealousy injustice.

Nothing is mine, I have only nothing but it is enough, it is beautiful and it is all mine. Do I even walk about in my own skin or is it something I have borrowed to spare my modesty?

Will you still love me when I'm a monster?

Part of me could do it. Run off and get married. But another part... Another part of me wondered if I could really trust anyone. If all relationships were all doomed.

A woman's sense of self is defined through her feelings and the quality of her relationships.

The Doctor: 'You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine, but you really think they're lying to make you feel better?' Amelia: 'Yeah...' The Doctor: 'Everything's going to be fine.

How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back?

He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with.They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn' t that worth something? He existed.

The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things.

I will take care of me for you, if you will take care of you for me.

Who am I? The sum of your dreams, the thrill you refuse to grasp, the unknown you fear.

Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?

In our relationships we need to uphold that aspect of the person which is the real person and the soul beyond their own self-doubt.

Fear that makes faith may break faith.

As a teenager in Brooklyn Quentin had often imagined himself engaged in martial heroics, but after this he knew, as a cold immutable fact, that he would do anything necessary, sacrificing whatever or whomever he had to, to avoid risking exposure to physical violence. Shame never came into it. He embraced his new identity as a coward. He would run in the other direction. He would lie down and cry and put his arms over his head or play dead. It didn't matter what he had to do, he would do it and be glad.